


Tears in Heaven

by grammarpolice



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Amputation, Angst, Bad Parent Martin Whitly, Blood, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Blood and Torture, Body Horror, Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hurt Malcolm Bright, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Malcolm Bright Whump, Men Crying, Minor Character Death, More Hurt Than Comfort, Mouth Sewn Shut, Murder, Psychological Torture, Stabbing, Torture, Whump, and some quotes, refrences to 1x11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 12:01:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22455841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grammarpolice/pseuds/grammarpolice
Summary: “Malcolm,” Gil said. “Malcolm, wake up.”Above, the light flickered. He could hear a gentle pitter-patter like the footsteps of a thousand mice on metal.He said, “It’s raining.”His mother used to tell him that raindrops fell when angels cried. He wondered whose tears fell from heaven that night.(References to 1x11)
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright
Comments: 20
Kudos: 120





	Tears in Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> title from chaplin's "tears in heaven" 
> 
> this contains spoilers to 1x11, using both quotes and ideas from the show. with that said, i do not own prodigal son.

Malcolm was still asleep when Gil came to.

The room was lit dim, a single hanging light eating up only a fraction of the darkness. It suspended from the middle of the ceiling, blacktop cased in dust and grime. A pungent smell like piss and blood curled up on the walls, pushing against concrete and between cracks from years of wither. The door to his left sat rusted, tall and lean and warped from the angle he lay at.

Gil coughed, then coughed again, past hot coals in his ribs and needles through his brain. His head rested on the floor, cheek accustomed to cold and the taste of iron, and muscle and bone contorted beneath his skin as he tried to pull himself up. Chain dug into his wrists, biting arm hair and pinching flesh between teeth, pinning his hands to the wall behind him. It wrapped around his fingers, between pointer and middle and back around to thumb, bending joints and tendon together. Any wrong move, any harsh or sudden yank, and his hand would shatter.

John Watkins was a lot of things. He was vile and malice and malevolent. He was sadistic and manipulative, bloodthirsty and monstrous.

John Walkins was the type of man to carve his own face from existence, to claw at wallpaper until his hands were nothing but bloody stubs, to spit venom and poison into his grandmother’s eyes so that she was blind to the devil.

He was a living nightmare of things that go bump in the night, the stuff of childhood terrors and fears gnawing into reality from the fabrication and creation of his own mind.

Most of all, though, John Watkins was a smart fucking bastard.

And Gil knew it then, when he maneuvered himself to lean against the wall, grunted, felt air suffocate in the space between his lungs and his spine. He knew it when memories of slit throats and sinister howls in the night and rotting sheds flitted back. He knew it when he saw Malcolm.

He was across the room, back pressed against the opposing wall, arms strung behind his back. His head lulled on his shoulders, his chin pushing into his neck, faced concealed with shadows. The first vertebrae in his spine protruded beneath his skin like a shark fin. His hair was matted, tousled, and Gil shuddered to think that blood could be the gel and dried glue.

“Malcolm,” Gil said. “Malcolm, wake up.”

Above, the light flickered. He could hear a gentle pitter-patter like the footsteps of a thousand mice on metal.

He said, “It’s raining.”

His mother used to tell him that raindrops fell when angels cried. He wondered whose tears fell from heaven that night.

“C’mon, kid, wake up.”

He leaned forward and his pinky caught between the chain’s jaw. It twisted and chewed at his flesh and his bone and he yelped, pushing himself back into his previous position, shoulder blades to the wall, neck cocked up, head slumping against concrete.

He took a long breath, sighed. “Wake up.”

There was no response, so he settled in his skin and listened to the rain for a while.

By the time the door pulled open, the ache in Gil’s rib cage had grown into a monster. It was glass claws and teeth and gums that chewed up his heart and spat it back into his chest. It was a rotting tongue licking the inner layer of his chest, between each rib and fiber of muscle tissue until he clenched his core and balled his hands into fists that ricocheted off of chain and swallowed down his fingers.

John Watkins smiled with fangs. He walked with bloodlust. He smelled like cigarettes and poison when he crouched in front of Gil, and his breath was sour with blood when he spoke.

“Comfortable?” he asked.

Gil said, “You fucker.” He spat with metal and chalk on his tongue.

And John Watkins laughed. “Now, now,” he whispered, wiping his cheek. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Gil grunted. “Why the hell not?”

There was a pause for a moment, and then Watkins smiled again. His tongue curled around his teeth, lips cracked and slanting upwards. He brought his eyes to Malcolm. “Kid’s still asleep, huh?”

“Don’t you fucking touch him.”

Watkins stood up.

“I swear to God, Watkins.” He kept his voice low, deep in his chest, shielded by broken ribs and a half-eaten heart.

“Watkins, you hear me!”

Watkins stalked across the room, blade in his hand.

“Don’t worry,” he said, forcing Malcolm’s cheek up with bloody fingers and running the blade beneath his eye. The boy whimpered, head falling back to his chest when Watkins released his face. “It’s only superficial.”

Gil growled. His heart melted hot like a burn, like candle wax beneath a flame, and he curled his palms in on themselves, chain constructing around bone until he felt blood trickle down his fingers. He huffed, tightening his muscles because he should be the one with iron in his skin. He should be unconscious, he should bleeding. With a voice that dripped venom, he asked, “What do you want, Watkins?”

Watkins sighed, moving across the room and back in front of Gil, standing tall. “How cliche. ‘What do you want, why are you doing this?’” He smirked, holding the blade up to his cheek and pressing the blunt part against his skin with the palm of his hand. “And now I’m supposed to say ‘revenge’ or… or ‘satisfaction.’ And, honestly— uh… what is it, Arroyo?—” he shrugged, whispered, “I’m just havin a little fun.”

“We know what you did,” Gil hissed. “What you’ve done. And I swear on my fucking grave that you’ll rot in a goddamned jail cell until the day you die.”

Watkins replied,“Maybe. Not like it’ll matter to you.” Then he gestured to Malcolm. “Or him.”

“If you touch him…”

“Then what? What happens, Arroyo? I already did. And what’d you do about it?”

Gil tasted blood. Above, an angel wept and mice ran along metal.

Watkins continued, “Honestly, Arroyo, you’re just collateral damage.” His grin twisted into a sneer. “I didn’t really want you, and I don’t really need you. Just remember that.”

Across the room, Malcolm groaned. He shifted, shoulders pushing forward then retracting into the wall. Shaking his head, he spit, drool stringing from his bottom lip, and he brought his chin to his torn shirt, twisting his neck from side to side and wiping his face.

“Look who’s up,” Watkins sneered.

Malcolm looked around for a moment then met Gil’s eyes. He whispered, “Gil?”

”Malcolm, everything’s -“ 

“Shut up!” Watkins shouted, eyes in fire and fangs splitting. He turned to Malcolm, slinked across the room, leaned down real close to his cheek, and whispered, “Miss me?”

Malcolm coughed, turning his face from the man. “How do you know me?” he growled. “Is it from the camping trip? What happened that weekend?”

Watkins scoffed. “Straight to the point, eh?”

“Answer the question.”

“I’m taking orders from you now?”

Watkins slapped Malcolm across the face. The boy yelped.

Gil twisted his fingers in the restraints again, bared his teeth like a dog.

Malcolm said, “You’re interesting, you know. You took me, took Gil. What’s your plan? You’re not gonna kill us, are you? I mean, you haven’t yet. You broke your technique. Serial killers don’t do that unless… unless they’re evolving. Are you evolving now, in this very moment? I think you are.”

“I don’t care what you think.”

“Of course you do, otherwise I wouldn’t still be alive, would I?”

“You’re just like your father, you know.”

Malcolm scoffed. “I’m nothing like him.”

“You are. You’re like me, like him. We have a connection, you and I.”

“I’m not a killer.”

“Not yet.”

There was a pause for a moment. The rain slowed. Gil ran his tongue along his top row of teeth.

“My father,” Malcolm started. “He was your mentor.”

“I liked working with him.”

“He taught you everything you know. The… the camping trip was a lesson, he was teaching you… but for what—”

Watkins smacked the wall above Malcolm's head. “Would you shut up about the camping trip?”

“Why are you so hesitant to talk about it? What do you know?”

Watkins growled low in his throat. He balled his hands into fists.

“Malcolm, that’s enough,” Gil said.

“The girl in the box. Who killed her? Was it you, my dad?”

“Malcolm.”

“What’s so special about her?”

“Shut up!” Watkins shouted. He punched the wall again.“Shut up!”

“What happened with her body?”

Watkins jerked forward, bones and veins pulling and pushing beneath his skin, pressing his fingers into Malcolm’s neck. “Doesn’t matter what happened to her. It’s what was gonna happen to you.” He released the boy’s throat.

“We brought you there to finish you.”

“What?”

“Your father was going to kill you.”

And all at once, the taste of blood was back on Gil’s tongue. “That’s enough,” he said.

Watkins spun around, all blood in his eyes. “I say when it’s enough!”

Malcolm whispered, “You’re lying.”

“You think?” Watkins pulled up his shirt, skin pallor and rolled above his belt line. He pointed to a spot on his abdomen that Gil couldn’t quite see. “Then how do you think I got this?”

“My father stabbed you?”

“Your father backed out at the last minute.” He released his shirt, jaw tightening around fangs and claws closing over hairy fists. “You stabbed me, you little fucker.”

The blood crawled up Gil’s throat. It wasn’t his, and it wasn’t Malcolm’s either. It was bitter like salt, like rotting futures and guilty truths and everything he didn’t want to see. He swallowed it down with a grimace, down his throat and into his stomach.

“No,” Malcolm said. “I don’t… I don’t remember that.”

“You don’t remember a lot of things.” Watkins shrugged, then drew the blade from his pocket. “I pulled myself out of a riverbank, patched me up with some fishing wire and a needle,” he began. “I survived. Will you?”

Gil knew what was coming before it happened. He knew it when Watkins pulled his arm back. He knew it when Watkins ran the knife between his fingers, knew it when he thrust it forward into Malcolm's abdomen.

And yet, Gil’s knowing didn’t make Malcolm’s scream any less painful.

Then Watkins twisted the blade inside Malcolm’s gut, and the latter yelped.

Gil shouted, “Hey! Hey, stop!” like it would do anything, like it would make anything better.

He was useless.

He was useless when it took twenty-three murders to solve the case of Martin Whitly. He was useless when Malcolm Bright’s childhood was crushed between jagged fingers and bloody teeth. He was useless when Jackie Arroyo was struck dead by a drunk driver.

Dead.

She was dead, and he was here.

And he hated himself for it. He hated the world. He hated waking up to sunny days and birds chirping, to sweet coffee and morning news because she should be there with him.

She should sit beside him, reading the paper. She should press his tie. She should kiss him goodbye and when he kissed her back squeal about how he ruined her makeup.

But she couldn’t because she was dead and it was his fault.

Watkins pulled the knife out of Malcolm’s chest and the boy gasped, lurched forward and curled around himself as much as the chains would allow. Watkins smirked, “Too late.”

Then he wiped the blade on his shirt and stuck it back in his pocket, walking out of the dim room.

When the door closed, Gil asked, “You okay? Fuck… fuck, put pressure on the wound, as much as you can. Where is it?”

Malcolm didn’t look at him. He said, “My father tried to kill me.”

“Malcolm, the blade… did it hit anything vital?”

He looked up, met Gil’s eyes in the darkness. “Don’t think so. It doesn’t hurt.”

There was a pause. Rain pounded against the roof.

Gil took a long breath. “He’s a lunatic, Malcolm, you can’t trust anything he says.”

“I know. But I trust this,” he whispered. A circle of blood swelled in the fabric of his shirt. “My father, he… and now I’m gonna…”

“Hey, hey, look at me. Nothing’s gonna happen, you hear me?”

“You can’t tell me something that you don’t trust and then expect me to believe it.”

Truth hit Gil like a slap across the face. It hit him like salt in burns, like a needle through skin. But he couldn’t let Malcolm see that. He hardened his face. “You trust JT, right? He’s a good detective?” he tried.

Malcolm nodded.

“And Dani, you trust her? The NYPD? The FBI?”

“Yeah.” He grunted, and his face twisted into a wince when he moved his shoulder back.

“So if you don’t trust me, trust them. Trust that they'll find us.”

Malcolm said, “I do trust you, Gil. I always have. I just don’t think you trust yourself.”

“Don’t profile me." He plastered on a half-smile. "Can’t turn it off, can you?”

“Guess not.”

Gil let his eyes close, leaned his head against the wall. For a moment, everything was normal. For a moment, everything was almost serene, like Jackie was alive and Malcolm was his son and Martin Whitly never slaughtered twenty-three innocent people.

“Gil?”

“Mmm?”

“It’s starting to hurt now.”

Gil opened his eyes, straightened up. “That’s okay, kiddo,” he said. “It’s the initial shock wearing off. You said you don’t think it hit anything important?”

“Yeah. It just…” he grimaced. “It hurts.”

“I know, bud. But it’s gonna be okay. I mean it; I believe it.”

He didn’t.

Malcolm sucked in a breath. “Gil… I…” He hiccuped, twisted in the chains. "It hurts..."

“You’re okay. Breathe. I’m right here.”

And that’s what he said when John Watkins opened the door again. That’s what he said when the man of evil walked over to Malcolm, one hand accompanied by an axe, the other curled around itself.

Gil said it when Watkins crouched down in front of Malcolm. Said it when Watkins pulled the latter’s hair back, forced his neck up, chin forward.

“It’s okay, kid.”

And maybe Gil said it to ease himself.

Maybe he said it because at least he wasn’t quite so useless anymore.

Maybe he said it because he couldn’t say it to Jackie, and he had a chance to say it to their son.

Watkins hissed, “Quiet!” turning his head sideways, eyes darting left to bare teeth at Gil’s. “Shut the fuck up before I shove my hand down your throat!”

Gil replied, “Try it.”

He meant, “Hurt me, not him.”

He meant, “Don’t lay a finger on him.”

He meant, “I’d do the same to you in an instant.”

But Watkins didn’t turn around. He didn’t walk over, wrap paws around Gil’s throat, tear his flesh off with fangs and glass. Instead, he just howled. “Or better yet." He paused, opening his palm to reveal a needle and thread. “I could just shut him up.”

“Don’t you touch him!” Gil shouted. He pulled against the restraints, let his knuckles and tendons and joints curl around themselves until he was sure they were broken. "Don’t touch him, Watkins, or I swear to God I’ll shoot you myself!”

“The more you speak,” Watkins said in a voice so calm, so euphoric it was a terrifying kind of wrong. “The more I hurt him.”

Watkins stuck his fingers into Malcolm’s stab wound, pressing against the flesh until the boy wailed.

Gil swallowed his words.

“That’s what I thought.”

When Watkins brought the needle to Malcolm’s lips, the boy shook his head frantic, back and forth, into the wall, shielding his cheeks behind his shoulders.

“Quit moving, you little bastard. Want me to poke your eye instead?”

Gil said, “Listen to him, Malcolm.”

And then he thought he might throw up. He thought he might cry raindrops with angels.

He wanted to scream, bite his own head off.

The worst part, though, was that Malcolm listened.

The worst part was that he sat there while Watkins threaded a wire through his skin, forced his lips together. He sat there while his mouth was sewed fucking shut.

Because Gil told him to.

Gil told him to like he told Jackie to go out with her friends that night. Like he told her to take his car, it was faster.

“There,” Watkins said, pulling back.

Black lines zigzagged across Malcolm’s lips, over teeth and gums and skin torn raw by wire. His eyes collided with Gil’s, and he was crying.

“Now, now,” Watkins smiled, lifting Malcolm’s face to his own. “It’ll make this next part much easier, kiddo.”

Gil snarled, “Don’t call him that.”

Watkins didn’t turn around. “Did we not learn our lesson about talking?” He spoke with venom. “Do we need a reminder?” When Gil gave no answer, he continued, “I did him a favor. And you too, I guess.” Then he stood up and picked up the axe he’d rested on the floor.

“Watkins…” Gil warned.

“What did I just say?!” He roared, raising the axe above his head.

Gil tried, “You don’t have to do this!”

He tried, “Do it to me!”

He shouted and screamed and writhed, and it didn’t matter.

When Watkins wielded the axe upward, Malcolm whimpered and met Gil’s eyes with fear and vulnerability and openness so unlike him. Tears streamed down his face, his eyes red and bloodshot. Blood spilled down his face, from his shirt, dripping onto the floor.

“It’s okay, Malcolm. Look at me. Don’t look at him.” Gil kept his voice even, a comforting hand on Malcolm’s shoulder even when he couldn’t be there.

Useless.

And the axe came down on Malcolm’s left bicep.

For a moment, there was silence.

For a moment, even the rain seemed to stop.

Then Malcolm screamed from inside his throat, loud and shattered. His body lurched forward, left shoulder jerking and leaving his severed arm in the restraints. Blood splattered across the floor, across Watkin’s face and the axe, and Malcolm just kept screaming, stitches expanding around the pressure, shifting with the force and tearing his skin raw, bloody. His eyes screwed shut and he shook his head, pulled against his still remaining arm’s restraints until his knuckles broke.

Gil threw up. Outside, the storm wailed and mice scurried over the roof.

What happened next happened fast.

Malcolm thrust forward, kicking his leg out, striking Watkins in the gut. The man stumbled, collapsing to the ground, axe clattering beside him, and Malcolm tore his hand, all bent and bloodied and shredded, from the chain, wrapping broken fingers and bruised tendons around the weapon’s neck. Then he pulled himself to his feet with the help of the wall, bracing against it and raising the axe to his shoulder. He spat blood, wiped his neck on his shirt, squared his eyes.

Watkins sputtered, kneeling, putting his head to the axe’s blade. “Do it.” He shouted, “Do it!”

Malcolm brandished the aforementioned, hoisting it up.

“That’s it,” Watkins whispered.

Gil heard sirens through the rain. “Malcolm, it’s okay, it’s over.”

“Come on,” Watkins said, straightening up against the weapon’s teeth. “Come on.”

“Don’t listen to him!”

“Do it!”

“Malcolm!”

Malcolm wielded the blade into Watkin’s chest. The man, past blood in his throat, laughed maliciously and cruelly. He choked, “Like father, like son.” Blood poured from his mouth and onto the concrete. He gurgled deep in his throat, then crumpled to his side, limp. 

Gil didn’t say anything when Malcolm fell to the floor.

He didn't say anything when the boy dragged himself with one hand, a trail of thick blood crawling behind him.

He didn’t say anything when Malcolm laid his head on Gil’s lap, armless shoulder bleeding onto the man’s suit pants.

Gil didn’t say anything when Malcolm wailed against his chest, heaving into his shirt as police sirens neared.

He just leaned forward around the restraints and kissed Malcolm's forehead. 

And when raindrops fell from the sky again, Gil knew Jackie was the angel crying. 

**Author's Note:**

> (i hope this lives up to your expectations!)


End file.
